


Kelas or the Night

by TranscientNight



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: POV First Person, Past Tense, Post-A Stitch in Time - Andrew Robinson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-11-03 21:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20684870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TranscientNight/pseuds/TranscientNight
Summary: When the Democratic Council decides to redesign the Cardassian emblem, Kelas Parmak comes home to heated opinions.





	Kelas or the Night

He had a look of surprise and slight dismay as he came into his abode, welcomed by the fragrance of redleaf tea that had been sitting for a while too long in the pot. Three pairs of eyes had set on him at once, black, hazel and blue.

“What-” he tried to stay, hesitating to remove his coat.

“Sit, it’s all fine,” I assured, gesturing at the free chair between myself and our green-eyed guest – Pythas had opted to sit directly on the kitchen bench, a foot resting in a drawer he’d opened for that purpose, the other dangling next to his cane.

“That situation doesn’t  _ look _ fine to me,” Kelas Parmak gestured at the woman sat opposite to me, her hands bound to the chair.

“Ha! Bold words coming from you,  _ Counselor! _ ” her eyes held a murderous glimmer, perfectly matching the shine of the blade on the table.

“What is this all about? I don’t have time for your games,” Kelas resolved to take off his coat at last.

“I’m afraid that it’s about this new… idea? At the government?” I poured tea for four at last. “The one about the emblem’s redesign,” I clarified and got up to bring one of the cups to Pythas, who accepted it in silence.

“And what about it?” Kelas looked tired as he came to sit, dragging his chair a bit away from us. “I take it you don’t like it? And who would you be?” he looked at the woman.

“Nizyal Keret,” she answered as fearlessly as could be expected from a military urchin.

“Did you come to try and murder me over what? A flag?” Kelas gave her a weary look.

“Because you think yourself so much more important than our emblem?” she shot back with a voice clear and sharp like a perfectly-cut blade of glass. “If it’s of so little consequence to you, why  _ touch it!? _ ”

“Your Keret… Our Union isn’t what it used to be anymore-” Kelas started with the politician speech, but that wasn’t going to fly.

“-You destroyed it! That’s what you did! First you bicker about powergrid mappings instead of just rebuilding, then you let our colonies secede one after the other, and now you even want to outcast our emblem! You’re destroying everything that’s left of our culture!”

“Culture is made everyday, Your Keret,” the doctor’s dark eyes set on hers and she silenced. “Cardassia has been slaughtered by-”

“-By you,” she cut off with unwavering resolution in her voice.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” Kelas reckoned. “Mercy killing,” his honesty shut her up again. “The world we had isn’t coming back, we must let go of the past and invent a new future for ourselves…”

“And what of the present?” she questioned.

“Yes,” I agreed with interest. “We’re not going anywhere, are we?” I thinned my eyes at him.

“Oh, Elim… you who used to be so patient…” he shook his head at me, “Have you also come to expect we can mend the damage done to this planet and to our people within just a few years?”

“Your government is bickering about a new face for our emblem, for State’s sake, Kelas!” I lashed out at him. “Talk of a way to waste time and lives! People are still dying out there! And here you are, splitting public opinion when we need to keep united, more than ever! It’s like you’re asking for a civil war!”

He sighed longly, leaning to massage his face with a hand, elbow weighing on his thin tigh. In his fatigue, my neighbor seemed more wiry than ever. He seemed older too, and the sight reminded me like a slap across the face that he  _ was _ my elder after all. But not by  _ so much _ that he should look so withered.

“Kelas…” I said more softly, holding to the warmth of my cup of tea.

“It’s about ideas, Elim, it’s always about ideas…” he looked up at me, keeping his head resting on his hand. “We need to become the idea. The emblem… this militaristic symbol… it’s not us-”

“It might not be  _ you _ but it’s still many of us,” Nizyal interjected. “You can’t simply go ahead and discard it like that!”

“Have you never considered that it might have been representing those of your caste, but not the rest of us? That military symbol…” Kelas maintained his position, “No, your rule is over, like it or not, and the idea that somehow, the military keeps on controlling our nation must die now.”

“No-”

“-Yes,” he didn’t let her speak this time. “The military was always meant to serve. From the day you took power, everything was destroyed. You shall now know your place and keep it, and your place isn’t Central Command anymore,” Kelas stated firmly.

“But is it really the right moment to do such things?” I still questioned.

“There’s no right moment,” he got annoyed and drank his tea. “We have to do everything at once, we don’t have much of a choice,” he shook his head. “And you want to kill me?” he looked at Nizyal. “It won’t trigger elections,” he shrugged. “I will be replaced by a member of my cabinet until then, and you would have given up your life for nothing. You cannot kill an idea with a knife. But we can kill an idea with a drawing.”

There was a sudden mess and it took me a second to review what had just happened in the previous second – Nizyal had kicked her chair away from the table and washed her leg over the table, throwing all of its contents over Kelas. To my left, my neighbor was breathing short and fast. In front of me, Nizyal had just tried to get up despite of the chair attached to her, but Pythas (when had he moved?) had whacked her in the neck with his cane. I stared at Kelas again, looking a bit more at the knife that had ended planted in his lower belly, over his left lap.

“She might not kill an idea, but she might still kill a man,” I concluded to that and took a sip from my cup.

“I’m not dead yet, Elim,” Kelas rasped, trying not to let shock get the best of him – his face was turning pale, enhancing the contrast with is dark eyes and orderly hair. “If you planned on killing me, that’s your worst job yet,” he added surly and glanced at Pythas, the ever silent. “So? What was this all really about?” he kept on holding the knife so it wouldn’t fall while he had nothing to apply pressure to the wound and prevent hemorrhage.

I was rather impressed by the willpower he put in his act and in his ignoring Nizyal’s swears – I saw Pythas roll his eyes rather quite discreetly before tipping her chair on the floor and stepping on her throat to muffle her sounds into choking and coughing. I knew it was also a barbaric way to keep Kelas on his toes and ill at ease.

“So, you’re not going to clean up the mess?” I looked at the broken tea cups, broken teapot and the wasted tea on the ground. “Or maybe now is a good moment to redesign the composition of a good redleaf blend?” I raised an eyeridge.

“Now, you see, Elim,” Kelas thinned his eyes at me, “ _ that’s _ what bad political rhetorics lead us to. You think that this situation is a good reflection of our current context? The Order being the only line to keep the military from killing us? And us civilians being incapable of choosing what to do, between cleaning up the mess or preserving life?” he glanced down at the knife. “But look at yourself, drinking your tea like nothing touches you. You want no involvement in politics nor in anything else. You just sit there, watch and write your memoirs like you’re already dead. And yet you break into my home-” he stopped there and I could see pain on his livid face.

“Well, I’m only one person,” I argued however poor that was.

“We’re all persons, Elim,” Kelas seethed and looked at the woman under Pythas’s boot, “So is she, and she doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, least of all in my home. So if you would be so kind as to put an end to this barbarism… Look at yourselves, really… Behaving like the militaries you despise…”

“I can’t say I despise them,” Pythas’s voice came to life at last, “and neither do you,” he looked at me with those warm coals. “I believe you wanted to become one of them, in a different life.”

I blushed in slight embarrassment and got up to get Kelas’s surgical kit. Pythas let go of Nizyal’s throat but couldn’t, due to his still-healing-wounds, raise her back into dignity. I had to be the one doing it, and I could feel the weight of the doctor’s eyes on me as I did. Nizyal only had half the heart to observe as he performed surgery on himself, cleaning the wound she’d caused and stitching it close – the knife hadn’t damaged any organ, only cutting through skin and muscle tissues.

Pythas regained his place on the kitchen bench, which meant that tidying up was left to me. Fair, I thought.

“Redleaf is hard to come by,” I still bemoaned over the loss of tea, “but maybe I can use less next time, and instead add some cloves of terepa, see how that goes…”

“Yes, that’s creative…” Kelas agreed. “But for the time being, could you be your usual nice and delicate self, and free Her Keret?”

“You’re not concerned she might try to harm you again?” I raised my nose along with the question.

“Why do you ask me rather than her?” my neighbor scolded me and laid kind eyes on the woman. “I understand your suffering more than you can believe… We’ve all lost so much and you find that there is yet more that you can lose,” he smiled wryly.

“Then why do you do it?” she questioned. “It’s our identity.”

“Identity, Your Keret, is a complex construct, but I promise you that the social aspects of it aren’t immuable. Yes, we’re a threat to your identity. But we’re only touching the parts that are in your control. I reckon it causes you pain and grief, it’s yet another mourning process… But please… I am tired. I would like to go lay myself and sleep, really,” he spoke slower. “Come back later, at the clinic. We can listen to you, provide medicine if you need any… There’s no shame in healing, Your Keret.”

“No,” she reckoned, looking at the plaster covering his stitches.

I unbound her. She got up, massaging her wrists, and looked at me. At Pythas. At Kelas Parmak. And she left without a goodbye.

“Do you really think she’ll come to the clinic?” I asked.

“No,” Kelas smiled. “Some wounds aren’t so easy to see. Now, leave. And you too,” he set his kind eyes on Pythas.

We didn’t oppose, and as we crossed out into the night, amidst my ‘sculptures’, I looked at him, my silent companion. All I could see was the scar mangling his profile. He looked back at the door and the other side of him appeared to me, as handsome as ever.

“Any hesitation?” I asked.

“Isn’t it what we’ve become?” he looked at me, standing there as a salvaged fragment of a world that no longer was. He wasn’t so different from my piles of rubble –all those debris I couldn’t let go and shaped into artistic monstrosities that other people came to observe, like mirrors to their own horror and suffering. I closed my eyes over that vision.

“I think… maybe I’ll go to the clinic tomorrow,” I said and opened my eyes again, bluer but truer than ever, I’m certain. “We’ve talked of healing so much that we never considered it was something we truly wanted. And wanted enough to do something about it. But now, Pythas… Now, the time has come, at least for me.”

His smile was the only answer he gave before disappearing into the night, but it kept me warm on the way home to my own bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Might write more if people are interested in further development.  
Please, read and review!


End file.
